WEBVTT

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Mysteries of vernacular:

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Zero,

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a number that indicates an absence of units.

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In order to understand the genesis of the word zero,

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we must begin with the very origins of counting.

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The earliest known archaeological evidence of counting

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dates back approximately 37,000 years

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and is merely a series of notches in bone.

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It wasn't until around 2500 B.C.

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that the first written number system

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began to take form in Mesopotamia,

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using the units one, ten, and sixty.

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Fast forward another three millennia

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to seventh century India

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where mathematicians used a symbol dot

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to distinguish between numbers

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like 25, 205, and 250.

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Employed as both a placeholder and a number,

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this all-powerful dot eventually morphed

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into the symbol we know today.

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The word zero comes from the Arabic safira,

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whose literal translation is empty.

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Passing through Italian is zefiro,

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zero came into English in the seventeenth century.

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A second descendant of the Arabic root

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was adopted into English through old French

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as the word cipher.

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Originally sharing the meaning empty with zero,

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cipher later came to describe a code,

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as early codes often used complicated substitutions

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between letters and numbers.

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From this shared empty origin,

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zero continues to represent

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the number that represents nothing.